Zhangyulong's Blog

Hukou system

Hukou system in china is the unique system in the whole world, it's a residential permit, you're relocated in the place where you were born, actually it's still not exactly, your Hukou is follow your parent's Hukou, if your parent's Hukou is village, your Hukou is village, even though you were born in a big city. Hukou in china is basically divided into Village Hukou and City Hukou, what the difference? If you have hukou of village, you would have land, the land is the most important property in old times. If you have Hukou of city, you can own medical and social insurance, it's much more attractive than land, after we have stepped into industrial age from agriculture age.

I was born in a small village, when I was very little, our parents admired those person who had hukou of town, and my father also tried to applied for the town hukou but failed, at that time, town Hukou means that you can get subsity on both finance and material, instead of working hard everyday in the field and turned in certain quantity grain to government, mostly for those person who own city or town hukou. There's really big difference even between village and town. As the developent of ecomony and the policy to peasants turned well, the gap between village and town became smaller and smaller.

After graduation and wored for 3 years, when I think about my future settlement in Ningbo city, the Hukou pops into my mind again, it's really a big problem I need to consider! Think about it, when I was sick and took treatment in hospital, I have to pay for three times higher price on the fees than the patient who has kukou of city. When I was old, the city goverment burea would provide you pension monthly, it would be a great help to relax the burden on your children.So many advantage, isn't it?

How can I get the Hukou of this city? the only way would be buy a house or sign labor contract with a good company, so difficult!

Guanxi

Along with the chinese Reform and Open-up, more and more foreigners come to China personally to do business, they begin to know more about china with their eyes. The most frequent words I heard from foreigner businessers are Political system in macroscopic aspect and Guanxi in microscopic aspect.

Guanxi is relationship among people in china, it's a network in the society and daily life, everybody has his own guanxi, he would be abandoned without guanxi in China. Guanxi exists everywhere from kindergarten to business in adult world, guanxi is referring to social interaction in other words, this skill is emphisized all the time, if somebody is not good at guanxi, he's difficult to do everything in this society.

It can be understood that this phenomenon exists in political world, but the degree and prevalence is startling, the daily route of chinese officers is improve the guanxi between him and colleague, his superiors and him, he did all these things just to join into the others' guanxi. So it's very common that most of chinese officers don't do anything for our tax payers, it's not that he doesn't own the ability but doesn't have the time to do things for us. They are always busy developing the guanxi in their community. The guanxi also results in corruption in political system, there're many ways to develop and improve guanxi in politics, the most direct and efficient method is to bribe the person you meant to come closely with. Communication and interact skill are just basic thing you need to do, you have to do some substantial thing to epedite you step, like bribery.

It's ridiculous that guanxi exists in academic circles, somedays ago a chinese won Chemistry Nobel prize, but his nationality is not China, he grew up and studied overseas, he is not a chinese actually. Look back on the past, there're many chinese citizens won Nobel prize, but never a real chinese, it's not a atmosphere to breed Nobel prizer. Think about it, more and more outstanding talent emigrating to owerseas, i heard before that one scientist in Chinese research institution can't endure the guanxi among perple in his institution, he don't like to spend time improving the guanxi in his circles, so he happened many hesitage handicaps in his daily working, he has to leave this country for future development. There's no national boundries in science, talented people is welcome to every country, including China, but the best people don't like this country.

Guanxi is improtant, but not the most improtant, there're many other things deserve our effort.

My sister's engagement

Yesterday my sister's wedding is engaged but the exacted date has not been confirmed yet, anyway it would be very soon, my mother told me the big day would be at the end of this year the latest.

It's not a long journey for my sister's engagement, they started dating 2 months ago and engaged the marriage yesterday, it's marriage, isn't it? Take my sister's experance as example, the follow processes are what the couples need to go through before marriage:

After they knew each other well and accepted each other, my sister would negotiate some terms with her BF, including asking for house, car, house facility, and deposit etc., if her BF's family is rich, my sister can ask for more from his BF, but if her BF's family is not rich, they need to negotiate and compromise with each other. It's Chinese tradition, the facility is for bride herself, but the deposit is for the bride's family, to return what her parents given to her during her grown up.

After they negotiating certain terms successfully, they proceeded to next step, two families would meet and have a lunch to confirm the engagement. After engagement, the groom's family requested for the bride's "eight letters", the groom's family would ask a fortune teller to choose a good date as marriage date. (p.s. In chinese calendar, there're 22 letters we use to represent date,ten are known as"tian gan" and twelve are "di zhi",two letters are used to represent each of the follow: year, month, day and time. All together, eight letters would represent one's birthday)

I expect my sister's marriage.